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Abstract
This article discusses illustrations in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (PSZ) [Complete collection of the laws of the Russian Empire]. Executed in St. Petersburg 1830–1916, PSZ is a multi-volume monument of the imperial Russian legal system and contains over 2,000 lithographs of uniforms, flags, and other paraphernalia. Inherently technical, the images and particularly those of uniforms convey the normative regulations issued by the Russian administrative apparatus. They touch upon the education and social status of artists, disclose the regimental and utilitarian attitude toward government-sponsored art, and convey a false sense of security and stability in a nation heading for revolution.
Notes
1. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii [Complete collection of the laws of the Russian Empire], series 1 (St. Petersburg: Pechatano v Tipografii II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830); Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, series 2, (St. Petersburg: Pechatano v Tipografii II Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830–1884); Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, series 3, (St. Petersburg: V Gosudarstvennoi Tipografii, 1885–1916). PSZ 1.1 (1830): 17. Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranskii (1772–1839), the statesman most closely connected with the imperial codification effort, viewed this publication as the foundation for the history and jurisprudence of the nation, without which new codes would be unacceptable. For information about Speranskii and his efforts to reform the legal education in Russia, see William Benton Whisenhunt, In Search of Legality: Mikhail M. Speranskii and the Codification of Russian Law (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2001), and Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957). In the foreword to PSZ, Speranskii described the difficulties of accessing laws prior to the codification efforts and explained the organization of PSZ.
2. See Peter A. Zaionchkovsky, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX-XX stoletii [Autocracy and the Russian army on the boundary of the 19th-20th centuries] (Moskva: Mysl', 1973); William E. Butler, Russia and Soviet Law: An Annotated Catalogue of Reference Works, Legislation, Court Reports, Serials, and Monographs on Russian and Soviet Law (Including International Law) (Zug: Inter Documentation Company, 1976); or Mark Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Old Regime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
3. Butler, Russia and Soviet Law, xii.
4. A. E. Nolde, Ocherki po istorii kodifikatsii mestnykh grazhdanskikh zakonov pri grafe Speranskom [Notes of the history of codification of local civil laws under Count Speranskii] (St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tip., 1906-14), i-1.
5. L. E. Shepelev, “Normativnye izobrazitel'nye materialy v Polnom sobranii zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii” [Normative visual material in PSZ], in Problemy sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi i politicheskoi istorii Rossii XIX-XX vekov, ed. V. S. Diakin and Iu. B. Solovev (St. Petersburg: izd. Aleteiia, 1999), 143-50.
6. Butler, Russia and Soviet Law, xii.
7. Alexandr F. Shebanov, “‘Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii’: iz istorii sistematizatsii zakonodatel'stva v Rossii” [PSZ: from the history of law systemization in Russia], Trudy: problemy istorii gosudarstva i prava 14 (1970): 280.
8. Shebanov, “Polnoe sobranie,” 280.
9. Shebanov, “Polnoe sobranie,” 280.
10. According to V. Butromeev, Entsiklopediia Rossiiskoi monarchii: chiny, tseremonii, gerby, dvortsy [Encyclopedia of the Russian monarchy: ranks, ceremonies, coats of arms, palaces] (Ekaterinburg: U. Faktoriia, 2002), 30, His Imperial Highness's Private Chancellery [Sobstvennaia Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliariia] changed with the control of each new ruler. During the reign of Nicholas I, the chancellery was separated into six divisions: the First Division was responsible for signing new laws into power; the Second Division was responsible for arranging and publishing historical laws; the Third Division performed political investigations and was equivalent to a secret service; the Fourth Division, formed in 1828, was placed under the personal care of the Empress; the Fifth Division, formed in 1836, and the Sixth Division, 1842, were temporary and in charge of managing the sociopolitical order in specific parts of the empire.
11. Butromeev, Entsiklopediia Rossiiskoi monarchii, 283.
12. Butler, Russia and Soviet Law, xii. Shebanov, “Polnoe Sobranie,” 280, notes that PSZ omits regulations signed into law by the Senate that were held in the archives of Moscow institutions and destroyed or lost during the War of 1812.
13. For more information about the Codification Committee, the Second Division, and PSZ see, Plany Polnago sobraniia Svoda zakonov [Plans of the complete collected code of laws] (St. Petersburg, 1885).
14. PSZ 2.2 (1830): 804-5.
15. See P. M. Maikov, Vtoroe otdielenie sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii 1826–1882: istoricheskii ocherk [The Second Division of His Imperial Highness's Chancellery, 1826–1882: historical sketch] (St. Petersburg: Skorokhodov, 1906). Volume 1 of PSZ is dated 1830, but the watermark found in the paper reads ‘1828.’
16. The exact number of employees is unknown, but according to enactment 1394 all single workmen lived in state-provided housing for the workmen's cooperative association.
17. PSZ 2.2 (1830): 805–7.
18. This law suggests that the committee was obligated to produce annual reports recording their expenses, the remainder of their supplies, and a tally of published materials used. These annual reports would probably list the lithographic shop expenses. Unfortunately, this information is not included in PSZ and the author does not have access to the archives where such materials might be kept.
19. PSZ 20.2 (1845): 65.
20. PSZ 20.2 (1845): 68 (§18,589, Jan. 4, 1845).
21. Chertezhi i risunki prinadlezhashchie k 1-mu Polnomu sobraniiu zakonov: litografirovannye po Vysochaishchemu povelieniiu v litografii departamenta voennykh poselenii [Drafts and drawings belonging to the 1st Complete collection of laws: lithographed in accordance with His Majesty's order in lithography of the Department of Military Settlements] (St. Petersburg: Tip. II otd. Sobst. E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1843).
22. Istoricheskaia zapiska o sodieistvii Vtorago Otdieleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii razvitiiu iuridicheskikh nauk v Rossii [Historical memorandum on the help of Second Division of His Imperial Highness's Chancellery toward the development of legal sciences in Russia] (St. Petersburg, 1876), 32.
23. Istoricheskaia zapiska o sodieistvii, 32.
24. There are other nineteenth-century publications with titles beginning Chertezhi i risunki, suggesting that there was a fashion for reproducing designs and drawings in formal or semi-formal publications. For an example see, Chertezhi i risunki k Polozheniiu o dovolstvii komand Morskago viedomstva po chasti obmundirovaniia i ammunitsii [Diagrams and drawings for the Regulation on allowances for crews of the War Department related to uniforms and ammunition] (St. Petersburg: s.n., 1876).
25. Opisanie koronatsii E. V. Ekateriny Alekseevny [Description of the coronation of Her Highness Ekaterina Alekseevna] (St. Petersburg, 1724; Moscow, 1725) as described in Edward Kasinec and Richard Wortman, “The Mythology of Empire: Imperial Russian Coronation Albums,” Biblion: The Bulletin of the New York Public Library 1, no. 1 (1992): 77–100.
26. Kasinec and Wortman, “The Mythology of Empire,” 81. This excellent bibliographical study of the Russian coronation albums does not, however, discuss the techniques of printing or the art of making engravings or lithographs.
27. Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 16–18.
28. John P. LeDonne, The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650–1831 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 215.
29. Fussell, Uniforms, 16.
30. M. M. Khrenov and P. T. Zubov, Voennaia odezhda Russkoi armii [Military clothing of the Russian army] (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1994), 3–5.
31. L. E. Shepelev, Chinovnyi mir Rossii XVIII–nachalo XX v. [World of officials in Russia, 18th to beginning of 20th centuries] (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1999), 199, 208.
32. Fussell, Uniforms, 198.
33. Shepelev, Chinovnyi mir Rossii, 211.
34. See, generally, Shepelev, Chinovnyi mir Rossii. For more information about the Department of Appanage, see, Wayne S. Vucinich, ed., The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 138.
35. PSZ 6.2 (1832): 224–30.
36. Shepelev, Chinovnyi mir Rossii, 230.
37. A. F. Korostin, Russkaia litografiia XIX veka [Russian lithography of the 19th century] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1953), 50.
38. Kasinec and Wortman, “The Mythology of Empire,” 81.
39. Korostin, Russkaia litografiia, 10.
40. See Galina Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia, 1810–1890 gg. [Russian lithography, 1810– 1890] (Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2006), 22–144.
41. Korostin, Russkaia litografiia, 50.
42. Korostin, Russkaia litografiia, 50.
43. Korostin, Russkaia litografiia, 50.
44. Lithographers experimented with and produced portraits, but with the advent of photography the popularity of lithographic portraiture declined. That said, while photography was cheaper and faster at capturing an image, it was slower to take hold in book production and never completely displaced lithography. Thus gravure and lithography persevered, arguably more as a trade than an art, until they were rediscovered and reinterpreted by the artistic group Mir Isskustva [World of Art].
45. Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia: 1810–1890, 22–150.
46. The administration was mindful of the potentially dangerous power of the press, and aimed to curtail its use by imposing regulations that determined who could operate a lithographic or typographic printing press. In 1826, for example, a new law required that any and all individuals who bought or inherited printing equipment or who wanted to print privately had to seek permission, and only those deemed trustworthy would be allowed to print. Even then, everything destined for printing had to be approved by censors from the Ministry of the Interior or Education. Printing shops condemned for creating uncensored books were to be closed and the owners brought to military court. PSZ, 31.1 §24,326 (1830).
47. For example, the lithographic shop of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, established in 1817, operated on an annual budget of 13,560 rubles and employed at least four printers from the Academy of Arts, each earning 500 rubles annually. PSZ 34.1 (1830): 384. The annual budget for the drafting workshop of the Artillery Department was nearly the same as the lithographic shop of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the same year—13,583 rubles. Of the total amount, 2,080 rubles were intended to cover the maintenance of printing and binding instruments and the expenses associated with supplies, including ink and paper. This information is noteworthy because it demonstrates how expensive printing supplies were in the nineteenth century.
48. PSZ 1.2 (1830): 1167.
49. PSZ 2.2 (1830): 1–2. Unfortunately, these uniforms are not illustrated in PSZ.
50. PSZ 35.2 (1863): 489.
51. The deluxe illustrations remain crisp and bright, while the thin wood-pulp paper used for mainstream illustrations is now changing color and becoming dangerously brittle. Mainstream illustrations also contain more irregularities. In some instances too much ink was applied to a lithograph stone and details were blurred, in others there was not enough ink, or the stone was not re-inked and the imprints came out faint and dull. Sometimes there are even smudges and fingerprints where printers touched the paper with inky hands, leaving evidence of the printing process.
52. Kulturnye tsennosti-zhertvy voiny: Peterhof, 3 May 2008, http://lostart.rosculture.ru/lost/catalog/t11/k3/. According to the Federal Agency of Culture and Cinematography, the holdings of the imperial libraries were increased through the imperial family members' personal acquisitions. They were often given presentation copies by authors or were sent complimentary copies by publishers of official publications such as PSZ. In 1845 the Second Division was ordered to supply one copy each of PSZ and SZ to the Winter, Anichkov, Yelagin, Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, and Gatchina palaces, as in the case of any publication dealing with jurisprudence.
53. Shepelev, Chinovnyi mir Rossii, 150.
54. To avoid the need to redraw the same images over and over, and to have a large inventory of stones, commercial printers in the middle of the nineteenth century devised a way to transfer images from working stones to “mother stones” for storage. One mother stone could contain as many as twenty unrelated designs, and whenever a particular image was needed the mother stone was prepared for printing and the desired likeness was printed onto paper. This print was then used to transfer the image onto a “daughter stone” from which the image could be printed for publication. For additional information, see Galina Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art in the Stalinist Era: Artists' Cooperatives in the Grip of Ideology and the Plan,” Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (2006): 779.
55. There are many fashion plates and military uniform illustrations produced around the same time as the PSZ illustrations, but none appears to accompany legal publications.
56. See Beth Fowkes Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 2, for her investigation of the role of art created under another nineteenth-century imperial power—England. She too suggests that artistic productions, like any other form of cultural production, reflect larger social and economic forces while constructing meaning and a sense of national identity.
57. The device of recycling images was common in early book production; one of the best known and earliest illustrated publications, the Nuremberg Chronicle, first published in 1493, purports to provide images of more than 70 cities. However, the same woodcuts were used to depict Macedonia, Neapolis, and Serraria. See Hartmann Schedel, Das Buch der Croniken und Geschichten [Book of chronicles and histories] (Nüremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493).
58. Beggrov was one of the leading lithographers in Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century. He studied at the Academy of Arts under M. N. Vorob'ev, a well-known landscape artist, and even as a student became interested in lithography. After graduating in 1825, he worked as a lithographer at the Ministerial Administration of Railways. His older brother Ivan Petrovich Beggrov and his nephew Alexander Ivanovich Beggrov operated a successful lithographic shop, one of a few involved with printing PSZ illustrations in the 1840s.
59. Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia, 1810–1890, 46.
60. Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia, 1810–1890, 159.
61. PSZ 2.2 (1830): 804-5 and 34.2 (1830): 384. The National Ministry of Foreign Affairs began operating its own lithographic shop the same year the printing shop of the Second Division was founded.
62. PSZ 40.2 (1867): 683–84.
63. Approaching the commission from the Second Division, draftsmen and lithographers must have been faced with a dilemma: how to reduce production costs and at the same time create attractive, informative, and authoritative illustrations. Clearly members of the Codification Committee needed to reconcile the great number of images with the practical limitations imposed by the publication business. There is no way to determine whether the limitations displayed by PSZ illustrations were a result of temporal or financial constraints. The actual price of producing individual lithographs for PSZ is still unknown. Typically, more detailed, colored, and oversized images would be priced higher than basic line drawings; presumably for PSZ bids, different-sized plates were priced depending on size and level of detail or mastery of each artist.
64. This information is derived from the bibliographic information available about the 1843 volumes. See Sobstvennaia Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliariia, Chertezhi i risunki prinadlezhashchie k 1-mu Polnomu sobraniiu zakonov: litografirovannye po Vysochaishchemu povelieniiu v litografii Departamenta voennykh poselenii [Drafts and drawings belonging to the 1st Complete collection of laws: lithographed in accordance with His Majesty's order in lithography of the Department of Military Settlements] (St. Petersburg: Tip. II Otd. Sobst. E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1843).
65. Glybov was not a very well-known lithographer. There is only one identifiable reference to an N. A. Glybov, owner of a lithographic shop in St. Petersburg, House of Talia, 17, who wrote “Obshchii vzgliad na graviroval'noe i litograficheskoe iskusstvo i sovremennoe ego sostoianie v Rossii” [Survey of engraving and lithographic art and its present state in Russia] as a presentation for the Russian Technical Society meeting in January of 1869.
66. For more about Ivan Beggrov, see A. F. Korostin, Nachalo litografii v Rossii [Beginning of lithography in Russia] (Moscow: Gos. Biblioteka SSSR im. V. I. Lenina, 1943), 116–121.
67. Alexander Beggrov studied at the Engineering and Artillery Schools, and at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Mikhail Klodt. Later he served as an officer on the frigate Svetlana and became a painter for the Naval Ministry. In 1873 he received a medal for his contributions to the arts, and in 1899 he was awarded the title of Academician of Arts. Kondakov mentions that in 1912, Alexander donated almost 64,000 rubles to help poor artists, their widows and orphans. For more information see S. I. Kondakov, Spisok russkikh khudozhnikov k Iubileinomu spravochniku Imperatorskoi akademii khudozhestv [List of Russian artists for the Jubilee handbook of the Imperial Academy of Arts], reprinted, edited, and expanded ed. (Moscow: Antik Biznes-tsentr, 2002), 64.
68. Until the 1860s, the title pages for illustration sections in PSZ were lithographed. These are beautiful examples of calligraphic and decorative scripts. Considering that lithography is a printing process that permits an easy and faithful reproduction of scripts, ample examples of handsome decorations found in PSZ can be used in the study of nineteenth-century Russian calligraphy. They are certainly similar to the examples of calligraphy found in sheet music produced by the same shops, and can be used to attribute the work of individual artists.
69. Kondakov, Spisok russkikh khudozhnikov, 229.
70. For information about the career of Fedor Solntsev, see the exhibition catalog, Wendy Salmond, Russia Imagined, 1825–1925: The Art and Impact of Fedor Solntsev (New York: New York Public Library, 2007), and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, ed., Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past, (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
71. A. V. Viskovatov, ed., Istoricheskoe opisanie odezhdy i vooruzheniia rossiiskikh voisk, sostavlennoe po Vysochaishemu povelieniiu [Historical description of uniforms and weapons of Russian troops, compiled on His Highness' orders] (St. Petersburg: V Voennoi tip., 1840–1862).
72. Viskovatov became involved with this publication following his successful Kratkaia istoriia Pervago kadetskago korpusa [Short history of the First Cadet Corpus] (St. Petersburg: Voen. tip. Glav. shtaba, 1832). This information was shared with me by Ernest Zitser of Duke University.
73. According to Vvedenskii, RGIA fond 789 contains materials about students and professors of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and unfortunately these materials are very limited and do not provide the names of the artists. Zitser suggests that there was a split in responsibility for artists, those at the Intendant Department documenting current uniforms and those at the Military Settlement drawing historical uniforms.
74. For example, G. E. Vvedenskii, Piat' vekov russkogo voennogo mundira [Five centuries of the Russian military uniform] (St. Petersburg: Atlant, 2005).
75. Nikolai Obolianinov, Russkie gravery i litografy [Russian engravers and lithographers] (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf; Vneshtorgpress, 2003), 92.
76. In addition to Miroliubova, see Paul Apostol, “The Art of the Book,” in Russian Art, ed. D. Talbot Rice (London: Gurney and Jackson, 1935), 115–126.
77. Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia, 1810–1890, 226.
78. Miroliubova, Russkaia litografiia, 1810–1890, 7.
79. Individuals who wanted to own a personal copy needed to pay ten rubles per volume. A complete set of the first series of PSZ was priced at 500 rubles. See E. Frish, Kodifikatsionnyi otdiel' pri Gosudarstvennom Sovetie 98 (Feb. 15, 1885): 12.
80. Eva H. Hanks, Michael E. Herz, and Steven S. Nemerson, Elements of Law (Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Co., 1994), 77.
81. Harvard Library has two volumes from the Cadet Corps and Commerce Institute in addition to the imperial composite set.
82. For more on this topic see Anne Odom and Wendy R. Salmond, eds., Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia's Cultural Heritage, 1918–1938 (Washington, DC: Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, 2009).
83. Mark Raeff, “The Romanovs and Their Books: Perspectives on Imperial Rule in Russia,” Biblion: The Bulletin of the New York Public Library 6, no. 1 (1997): 12.
84. Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power, 13.
85. For more information on this topic, see Willard Sunderland, “Shop Signs, Monuments, Souvenirs: Views of the Empire in Everyday Life,” in Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture, ed. V. A. Kivelson and Joan Neuberger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
86. Sunderland, “Shop Signs,” 105.